Christmas Crash
by Timeloopy
Summary: Secret Santa For Ciboulette. Jack and Sawyer meet in a bar on Christmas Eve. We get a glimpse of what each did with their reset. Since, this is not usually my thing, I feel I should warn you that this gets somewhat skatey. But Juliet is treated nicely.


_For Ciboulette: Couldn't tell if you wanted shippy or not. . .hope you enjoy._

_R__EQUEST 1: Any two members of the quadrangle (Suliet, Jate, Skate, Jacket, Jawyer, Kuliet) meet at a bar on Christmas eve, having been apart for a long time._

***

Black ice was a menace. You didn't see it until your car was spinning out of control and wrapping itself around the nearest telephone pole.

"Sonuvabitch!" Sawyer growled as his '65 mustang came to a stop and his head stopped whirling. "Should have stayed at the Holiday Inn – dreamin' of a White Christmas my ass."

He slammed his hands into the steering wheel as though it were the car's fault then leaned back and took a deep breath. His head throbbed and he probed lightly at the most painful location. Blood. Damn.

Releasing the seatbelt with one hand, he opened the door with the other – or at least he tried. Damn again. Using both hands didn't do any more good than one had. He crawled to the other side and tried the passenger door which he managed to get open about six inches. There was no way his six foot four frame was slipping through there. He had just begun rolling down the window when he heard a creak and saw two hands grasping the edge of the door.

The metal groaned underneath the stress and Sawyer lifted his feet and added his weight to the effort. The door opened to reveal a man's form wrapped in a leather trench coat that was dusted with the falling snow. The man was offering a hand so Sawyer took it and allowed himself to be pulled from his ruined vehicle. Outside, he found himself face to face with Dr. Jack Shepherd – a face he'd frankly have rather gone a lifetime without seeing again.

The look on the other man's face indicated he might not have rushed to his aid if he'd known who the car held.

"You," Jack muttered, shaking his head.

"Thanks, I guess," Sawyer muttered back. He turned to survey the damage.

"Damn. Looks like I ain't going nowhere anytime soon." Sawyer patted the pockets of the army jacket he was wearing and came up dry. He looked around. "Where's your car?"

"Parked across the street," Jack said waving in the direction of a roadside bar that Sawyer hadn't noticed as he'd spun out. Now that he took a closer look, he realized Jack had already indulged in more than a little Christmas cheer already. "I saw the wreck and thought I 'd see if I could help but it doesn't look like you need a doctor."

"No," Sawyer agreed, eyeing the car. "I guess I can call for a tow from inside where it's warm at least."

"Good luck with that," Jack shrugged. "Not exactly on the beaten path out here."

As he followed Jack back into the bar, he thought about how Jack was the last damn person he wanted to see on Christmas. What the hell was Jack doing in Iowa anyway? Then a possible reason for Jack to show up struck him and he considered his next words carefully.

"So, how is she?" Sawyer said, as he plopped onto a stool at the bar next to the one Jack took. Jack's drink was still sitting there waiting for him. The bottle rested beside it. Jack filled the glass and tossed it back with a practiced hand.

"How's who?" Jack asked as Sawyer motioned for the bartender and ordered rum. Seeing Jack had made him think of Juliet and they'd always turned to rum in times of crisis.

"Kate. How is she? I'd have thought the two of you would be snuggled up around the Christmas tree with a bottle of wine about now. You have a fight?"

Jack gaped at him. "Honestly?"

"Yeah, honestly, Jackass."

"I was about to ask you the same thing. I haven't seen her, well ever, this time around. I remember her though."

"Oh," Sawyer said, unsure what else to say.

The snow continued to fall outside the glass storefront windows of the bar that were painted in a rather amateurish way with holly leaves and a greeting of 'Merry Christmas!' – political correctness not have found its way to this particular corner of Iowa just yet. It wasn't a big place and the two old rivals were just about the only patrons. The bartender was a young woman in her late twenties whose mascara had run leaving a raccoon-like effect. Obviously, she wasn't having a much better Christmas than her customers.

Sawyer turned as music started up to see that the one of the only other patrons – a man in his sixties dressed in jeans and a denim jacket had started up Patsy Cline's rendition of some Christmas tune that Sawyer couldn't quite place. His companion was a blonde woman about the same age – she looked weary – and maybe a little wistful – like she would rather be spending her Christmas elsewhere.

Jack's eye followed the couple and he missed Sarah and the kids – he shouldn't be here on Christmas but it was a little late for that now. He took another drink. He'd been sober since he woke up three years ago with a bad hangover and a feeling that his mind was going to split completely in two. Two sets of memories had emerged.

In one, he had an ex-wife named Sarah and his father had died and he'd crashed on a plane and his life had descended ever deeper into misery. And in the current one, he'd met a man named Jacob who'd bought him lunch and told him that he was a good man – maybe a great man - but that he needed to learn compassion. He'd taken it to heart and what was splitting his head in two that night three years ago was that half of his mind was screaming that Sarah had cheated on him and left him. Even though that night she was lying right beside him in bed, pregnant with their second child who was frankly a bit closer to the first one than they'd planned.

The reason he was getting drunk tonight was simple. One half of him loved the woman he shared his life with very much, but the other half was in love with a woman he'd never even met, though he'd spoken with her on the telephone a few times. Kate had mentioned she was involved and he'd assumed she was with his current drinking companion.

"You remember me?" he asked Sawyer when he realize how long their silence had gone on.

"Oh yeah, I remember you. How could I forget? You good as killed her."

"You mean Juliet?"

"'Course I mean Juliet. Who else?"

"No, I checked. She's alive in Miami with her sister. I checked," Jack's speech was beginning to slur slightly from the drinking.

"Yeah, I know there's a Juliet Burke alive in Miami that looks just like her, talks just like her, has almost the same background. But that ain't her. Ain't my Juliet," Sawyer said, turning up his glass and pouring it down his throat slowly – savoring the burn. "We're made up of the things that happen to us and what happened to my Jules ain't happened to that one. And I wouldn't wish those things on her to tell the truth so that's that."

"So, she doesn't remember then?" Jack said.

"If she does, she don't want to," Sawyer said with a shrug. "Can't blame her. If she can shut out the nightmares more power to her."

"Yeah," Jack said. "You really never looked up Kate?"

Sawyer hesitated. He hadn't actually looked her up. But he'd run into her and they'd had a few drinks and laughed about old times – okay, strictly speaking they'd also gone back to his hotel room and relived a few old times. But just as he was pulling her against him to fall asleep, she'd kissed his cheek and slipped from the bed.

"I really shouldn't have done this, Sawyer. I'm seeing somebody."

"Ah," he'd said.

"He's a good guy. He doesn't deserve this. I'm supposed to pick him up from the hospital because his car's in the shop. This was fun, Sawyer. But it can't happen again." She'd said.

And he'd nodded and watched her go. It seemed like a long time ago.

"I ran into her once. She looked good," Sawyer said finally. "What are you doing in Iowa?"

"Family went skiing in Vermont. I'm flying out to meet them but there was a layover and I got grounded in Des Moines."

"We're a long damn way from the airport, Doc."

"Yeah, well. What are you doing here?"

Sawyer noticed the waitress had picked up her cell phone and begun to speak heatedly to someone at the other end. She moved off in the direction of the kitchen ignoring her customers completely. He shook his head.

"Oh, I'm here to see my daughter. I get her on Christmas Eve and I had to carry her back home. I got her a bike. You figure four's old enough for a bike? I don't think her mom liked it much." He grinned as though the fact that her mom didn't like it might have been part of the reason for the gift.

"I thought," Jack began. "Nevermind."

"Spit it out."

"I thought your daughter was in Albuquerque for some reason."

"Other lifetime," Sawyer said as though it were the most natural thing in the world to have two sets of memories at war in your head. It shouldn't have surprised Jack that Sawyer had simply taken the occurrence in stride or at least did a good job of pretending he had. "In this one, I woke up so to speak before I went through with the con on Clem's mother. I told her the truth about what I was up to, gave her my number and hit the road before my partner could catch up to me. Cass was more than a little pissed. But when she found out she was pregnant, she called me and she didn't turn me in since I didn't take her money. She also never left Iowa."

"So you're with her now?"

"Nah. It's complicated. I get to see Clem pretty much when I want to."

"You don't have partial custody or anything."

"Nope," Sawyer said, his jaw hardening. "Nothing official – I mean, I see her a lot– but Cass doesn't really let me take her off for weeks at a time or anything. Got to take her to Disneyworld though – that was kind of nice – in a hectic insane kind of way."

Jack nodded and tried to imagine seeing his own kids on such a schedule. It was an uncomfortable thought – one that made him second-guess his decision to come here even through the alcohol-induced haze clouding his mind. Sarah wouldn't like this.

Sawyer watched the couple in the booth in the mirror.

"You know who that is, right?" Sawyer said casually, swirling his drink.

"Yeah," Jack said, meeting his eye in the reflection. "I know who that is. I met Diane Jansen once. Can't say I cared for her."

"And you realize that's the infamous Wayne there with her," Sawyer said. The coolness in his voice belied the time he'd spent with Juliet – there was something of her steely calm there instead of his natural rage.

"Yeah, that's the bastard himself," Jack said setting down his glass and turning to face his companion. "How did you know?"

"Like I said, I ran into Kate once. Occurred to me to look up old Wayne after that. You see that scar underneath his left eye?"

"That was you?"

Sawyer shrugged.

"She didn't do it this time around," Jack said. "She didn't kill him. But I looked it up, her medical record. When she was kid she spent more time in the E.R. than I spent there in my internship. Broken bones. Stitches. All accidents – the mother covered every single time."

"So, why are you here, Jack?" Sawyer said in the same even tone he'd used before.

"Just waiting," Jack said.

Sawyer and Jack sat together in the bar and listened to the entire Patsy Cline collection of holiday hits. Then Wayne fed the jukebox more quarters and they moved on to Waylon Jennings and Kenny Rogers. And around eleven o'clock, Diane spilled a drink on Wayne's jacket.

Wayne drug her outside and backhanded her sending the woman sprawling in the parking lot. He drew back to hit her again to find his arm restrained by a talk dark haired man in a long black leather trenchcoat.

"What the hell?" he muttered, turning to get a look at Jack. Sawyer's fist landed squarely across Wayne's jaw. They didn't kill him. But though, Diane screamed at them to stop they didn't respond to her requests either. Eventually, when Wayne lay unresponsive on the pavement, a navy blue SUV pulled into the parking area summoned by Diane on her cell phone.

Kate climbed from the driver's seat and opened her arms to the pathetic creature who scurried into them.

"It'll be alright, Mama."

"They're going to kill him, Katie. They're going to kill Wayne."

Kate looked over her mother's shoulder at Wayne lying on the pavement and then up at the two strapping figures who stood over him.

"I don't think they're going to kill him, Mama. If they wanted to kill him, the blonde one's packing a 38."

"What? How do you know that?" Diane looked up confused, but Kate walked her around to the passenger door of the SUV and helped her inside, murmuring platitudes before shutting the door firmly.

"So, you two just can't stay out of trouble, huh?" Kate said. Once she turned her back to her mother, a grin played at the corner of her mouth. She crossed her arms across her chest but not before Jack noted the sparkling diamond wedding band on her left ring finger.

"Just killing time," Sawyer drawled. "Didn't have nothing else to do."

"Uh-huh," Kate said in a deliberately solemn manner. "No date tonight?"

Sawyer winked at her. "Maybe New Years, but no, not tonight."

"This guy was giving your mom trouble," Jack said, nudging Wayne with his foot. "Couldn't let him get away with something like that on Christmas Eve."

"No, that situation definitely needed fixing," Kate said, the corner of her mouth twitching though she fought hard for control. "How's Sarah?"

"She's good," Jack said. "Pregnant again."

"Don't you ever leave the poor woman alone, Jack?" Kate asked with a grin.

"She likes kids," he said defensively.

The tow truck pulled up next to Sawyer's wrecked vehicle and Kate turned to look.

"Yours?" she asked Sawyer.

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"Southerners and snow are a lethal combination," she said. "And for heaven's sake pay him cash. You both smell like a brewery, so you can't call the cops."

Sawyer looked at Wayne on the ground. "What do you want us to do with him?" he asked.

"Wrap him up and put a big bow on him?" Kate suggested.

"That was generally the idea," Jack said. "Merry Christmas."

Sawyer offered his best cocky grin.

"Oh boys, you shouldn't have," Kate said with a laugh. Then she walked over and brushed her lips across both their cheeks, lingering ever so slightly longer near Sawyer's ear.

"If your date stands you up on New Years, give me a call," she said softly.

Sawyer made his way over to pay the tow truck driver and find out where they were taking his poor vehicle. Jack opened his cell phone and called a cab since he really wasn't in any shape to drive. It would cost a fortune to take a cab all the way back to the airport but he was good for it. Besides, he missed his family all of a sudden.

Kate rolled past them tossing them each a wave as she drove off into the night.

***

Kate walked over to the Christmas tree and plugged in the lights. Her mother was tucked into the guest room which wasn't ideal but she couldn't bear to have her wake up in arm's reach of Wayne on Christmas. She looked down at the pile of presents nestled underneath the tree and then at the two stockings that hung at the mantle. One was carefully handstitched with 'FRECKLES' and it hung forelornly empty in the light of the fire she'd banked before leaving the house.

The other was stuffed to the brim and those same even stitches indicated that one belonged to 'SAWYER'.

The door opened as she pulled a green fleece blanket over her lap and sat down to sip at a cup of eggnog that she'd made before all the excitement. Sawyer sheepishly stepped inside, after dusting off the snow on the front stoop.

"You wrecked it again?" Kate said, more amusement and concern than anger in her voice.

"It's that damn black ice. You can't see it."

"If you didn't try to drive 90 on a two lane country road, that would probably help. My stocking is empty," she said pointedly. "Isn't Santa coming?"

"Santa doesn't come til you go to sleep. You oughta know that," Sawyer countered.

"Santa missed my house a lot when I was little," Kate said as she exchanged a sad look with Sawyer.

He crossed the room and sat down beside her on the couch pulling her into his arms.

"Yeah, mine too." He said, kissing the top of her head. "Now tell me again why we don't want Jack to know we're together?"

"Because we don't want Jack to be unhappy. Jack does outrageous things when he's unhappy like blow things up," Kate reminded him. "As long as he's not thinking about us, he's happy with Sarah and his kids."

"His ever-increasing number of kids," Sawyer interjected.

"His ever-growing brood," Kate laughed, adjusting her position to allow Sawyer to stretch his legs out on the couch beside her. She lay her cheek against his chest and inhaled the rum. So, he'd spent a little time grieving for Juliet tonight she supposed and she tried to ignore the faint stab of jealousy. They'd worked through all that and they'd spent a fantastic day with Clementine – no need to spoil it with ghosts of Christmases past.

"And why is it we care whether Jack's happy?" Sawyer interrupted her thoughts.

"Because I care about him," Kate said honestly. "I care that he's happy and he wouldn't be if he thought I was with you. We don't want him doing anything stupid."

"Uh-huh, like driving up to Iowa on Christmas Eve? He thought you were with me – I think he was here to see you. Or maybe to kill Wayne – I wasn't quite sure which."

"Killing Wayne is a bad idea – no matter how much he deserves it," Kate said tensing. She turned to look at Sawyer. "You didn't. . .I mean, he's okay right?"

Sawyer searched her face and found fear there – the fear of being locked away – the fear that had kept her running in that other lifetime. It was her fear that kept him from killing Wayne though this wasn't the first time that he'd beat the man senseless. Or even the second.

"Wayne will live to drink another day," Sawyer said drily. "And Jack went home to his wife and kiddies – happy."

"Good," Kate said, cuddling against him again.

"Speaking of ever-growing broods, you ever think we might want. . ." Sawyer began.

"Not yet," Kate said firmly. "I want it to be just us for a while longer yet. You've already got a daughter anyway."

"Yeah, and thank goodness I'd already dropped her off before the accident."

"Thank goodness," Kate shivered a little as she remembered what the car had looked like wrapped around the pole. A Christmas miracle that he was okay really. She wrapped her arms around him a little tighter and he leaned down to kiss her properly.

"We COULD practice if you like," Kate murmured as they came up for air.

Sawyer plunged his hand into the tangle of her soft curls and pulled her lips to his. They parted allowing him to taste her and she sucked lightly on his tongue eliciting a groan deep in his throat.

In a fluid motion, he stood up and swept her into his arms and whisked her down the hall to their bedroom with her giggling all the way.

After their desire was sated, Kate fell asleep nestled amid the blankets with a soft sigh. Sawyer left her and went down the hall to fill her stocking with the gifts he'd hidden away. When he was done, he slipped back into bed beside her. She rolled over sleepily and brushed her lips against his cheek.

"Did Santa come?" she asked.

"I think so," he said kissing the top of her head.

"Merry Christmas, Sawyer," she yawned.

"Merry Christmas, Freckles," he said then they all settled down for a long winter's nap.

But they heard Jack exclaim as he drove out of sight, "Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night."

***

Author's note: Sorry, couldn't resist the ending.


End file.
